


distant rondo

by Molnija



Series: last night's dreamers [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Ballroom Dancing, Character Death, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, LISTEN I KNOW THIS SOUNDS WEIRD BUT IT MAKES SENSE I PROMISE, M/M, Never thought I'd tag that, Prompt Fill, akaashi is an owl/human kinda hybrid thing but it's basically just human with wings and weird eyes, but it's something along those lines?, i'd tag forbidden love but it's not really, implied genocide ...., no actual rondo sorry, oikawa is literally a king, or well ... no wings anymore ..., uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-30 19:04:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10883049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molnija/pseuds/Molnija
Summary: Colours melted into each other, hundreds of elaborate dresses, thousands of intricately detailed masks sitting atop millions of faces, but one was as clear as day on the other side of the ballroom.





	distant rondo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allu-ria (waffelingaround)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waffelingaround/gifts).



> prompt was Akaoi + “You’ll die and I can’t watch the person I love die.”  
> in hindsight, this is much less angsty than it probably should have been considering it was angst prompts but the angst. is there. it just needs a while to start up oKAY
> 
> this was supposed to be a drabble but I got too invested and now it's this. this AU only exists because I started doodling a faerie Mai in class and ... got too invested ... I'm noticing a pattern
> 
> anyway I'm probably gonna write more in this AU, but nothing multichapter-ish (3wl takes up too much of my heart to write another multichapter fic anytime soon lbr), more like ... character stories to detail the world and the characters' fates. or maybe I'm not. maybe I've just jinxed it. but I like my designs lol. noctua = Latin for owl btw, even though I'm ignoring the grammar for the plural haha.
> 
> my first published fic that isn't rated T or under, I'm evolving. °^° I'm not sure if it exactly warrants an M, but it's closer to M than to T, so ... there would have been some extremely light smut rather than whatever the h*ck this is but I suck at that (haha ... suck) ... even though there really needs to be some top!Akaashi in this tag but I digress
> 
> I have no idea why I named it distant rondo. I just kinda did. live with it 
> 
> (I almost called it missa pro defunctis tho but I might wanna use that as a chapter title someday so I decided against it)

Colours melted into each other, hundreds of elaborate dresses, thousands of intricately detailed masks sitting atop millions of faces, but one was as clear as day on the other side of the ballroom.

Tooru would have recognised Keiji everywhere, no matter what he was wearing. The black suit, too distinctly human for his kind, and the black, feathered mask did nothing to hide the grace in his every movement, the way he fiddled with his hands as if nervous, the quirk of his lips into something vaguely reminiscent of a smile, all of it unique to him and only him.

He did everything right, really, fading into the dancing, chattering crowd until most people would have not spared him so much as a second glance, but Tooru was not most people, and it was not Keiji’s fault their connection outweighed the reasonable.

He knew he saw him as well when he raised his head from the marble floor and their eyes locked – and  _gods_ , those eyes, he swore they pierced his heart every time he looked into them –, and the look on his face was an exasperated one.

Tooru grinned.

Then made his way over to him in quick, determined steps, the muses of the heart watching him from the night sky painted on the impossibly high ceiling, fittingly so, if he dared say, as in matters of the heart, he very much needed their support. Keiji oftentimes left him a bumbling mess, vulnerable and fragile, and he would not have had it any other way.

“Why, hello there, beautiful” he breathed and came to a halt a little too close to him, drinking in the sight he had not seen in too long. “What a pleasant surprise.”

Keiji sighed but did not step back, instead settling for staring him down, irises gleaming a bright teal – Tooru’s favourite colour, always had been – on black, a gorgeous indicator for his heritage, though the wings he had loved so much had long been torn off. “Tooru,” he said, and the sound of it took him so off guard he almost broke and started sobbing right there.

It had not been an eternity, but gods, it had felt that way.

He caught himself before he started to cry on his own ball; it was miracle enough they were leaving him relatively alone, as alone as you could be on an event like this, anyway. Instead, he teased, “I don’t recall inviting you. Well, I would have, if I’d known where you were … Seriously, where were you?”

“With Hinata’s family, like I told you. I was wondering why you didn’t send anything, actually, since you had my location.”

“I figured you’d already moved on!” Staying in the same place for long was a huge risk after all, even if it was hidden away in an unknown village.

“And you didn’t even bother to check?” Keiji asked and was surely raising an eyebrow right now, behind the mask. “Gods, Tooru, sometimes I wonder if you really do love me.”

“I do,” he replied immediately and his smile fell. “I love you.”

The smirk playing on Keiji’s lips let him know that getting him to say exactly that had likely been the intention. Not that he minded; he would say it over and over again if fate so let him. And while he didn’t verbally return the sentiment, Tooru knew he felt the same.

“Shall we dance, love?”

Keiji looked around them, where people were chatting and eating and paying them no mind, and he could understand his hesitance. Despite everything, they would stand out, Tooru more so than Keiji, since he was not wearing a mask and the king of the land tended to draw quite some attention to himself. His suit did not help, bright silver and white, and he loathed it, but those were the colours of the throne, so he was required to wear them. At least he did not have to wear his crown, that aesthetically pleasing, but severely annoying thing.

The smart thing would have been to simply leave the ball and take Keiji to his bedroom, but he was feeling restless and daring, and people would not recognise his partner anyway, not as a noctua, at least, without his wings.

Keiji seemed to be thinking the same thing, and when Tooru extended his hand, he took it and let himself be swept away into the dancing masses.

They were clumsy, always were; despite Keiji’s natural grace and Tooru’s lifelong etiquette training, neither of them were particularly adept at dancing. It did not matter, though, not when their hands were touching, if through gloves, and when they were so close their foreheads were almost touching as they moved with the rhythm to the best of their ability.

He wanted to freeze this moment and hold onto it forever, eternally dancing with the person he loved.

The feathers on Keiji’s mask almost poked Tooru’s eyes on several occasions, but he could not even find it in himself to mind, and they laughed it off, the atmosphere light and airy like they had never been apart. Eventually, Keiji’s head dropped on his shoulder, and he whispered, so quietly he would have not had heard it if he had not been so close to his ear, “I don’t want to keep hiding. I want the world to know about this. About us.”

“I know,” Tooru replied quietly, because he did know, he felt the same. “But they can’t. I won’t let you put yourself in danger like that.”

“I know,” Keiji repeated his words, and it was always like this, always the same understanding. They knew, they were not happy with it but they acknowledged and had to live with it. If they had lived in a different time, maybe, things could have been different. Their relationship would have still been frowned upon, and they would have had to deal with hate and mockery thrown their way, but it would not have been at the risk of losing Keiji’s life. Now, ever since the war a year ago, the few noctua that had survived were being hunted down, and no matter how tirelessly Tooru worked to change that, his own council was still blockading him. The only one even vaguely on his side was Hajime.

But none of that mattered when they were here, in one moment of bliss.

It would have been so easy to kiss him right now, but he knew better, as that would surely get the people to talk, if seeing them dance was not already enough to lead to gossip. That was a line he did not dare cross. Even his lovesick mind had some semblance of rationale.

“How long can you stay?” he muttered instead and felt Keiji tense up against him.

“Not long. I wasn’t even supposed to come, and you certainly weren’t supposed to notice me, but I wanted to see you …”

“Define ‘not long’.” It should be at least a night, to wake up to him just once until they had to part again.

“Ideally, I should return to the village tomorrow, so I have to leave soon.”

“’Ideally’?”

Keiji looked up and his eyes locked with Tooru’s again, unreadable behind the mask. “’Ideally’, because I don’t think I can do that. It’ll be more dangerous the longer I stay, but …” A bittersweet smile tugged on his lips. “We deserve tonight, at least.”

He had to admit he was not keen on the idea of Keiji endangering himself more than absolutely necessary, but all of that faded in contrast to the surge of sheer joy he felt upon hearing those words.

“Then let’s make it last.”

 

* * *

 

“You haven’t been eating enough,” Tooru remarked upon seeing Keiji’s bare upper body, his shirt discarded somewhere near the bed. Still lithe, still that of a dancer rather than a warrior, but he had certainly grown much thinner than the last time he had seen him, just before he had sought shelter with Hinata.

“Tell me about it,” Keiji sighed. “Food is scarce, and I can’t eat most of what they do. Without my wings, I can’t go hunting, either …”

Those words were like a stab to his heart. The noctua, while certainly not violent, had always been hunters, and a passion for food had been part of their culture much more so than that of humans or fae.

Seeing him like this, Keiji seemed so much more vulnerable than anyone could guess at first glance. Scars were marring his body as well, most notably the ones on his back where his wings had used to be that had never healed completely, hard, pale skin spreading out like someone had aimlessly hacked into him. But there were more, from claws that had dragged over his arms, fire that had burned one of his hands, teeth that had dug into his neck.

They made him all the more beautiful because they showed he had been strong enough to survive all of this torture, but if Tooru could have undone the pain he had gone through in some, in  _any_  way, he would have done so without a moment of hesitation.

He raised his hand to Keiji’s cheek and felt him lean into the touch, closing his eyes and sighing contently. He seemed so calm now, but he knew that he had many more scars than those that were visible – he had lost his entire people, had seen his best friends, his family, everyone he knew and loved get killed before his eyes. Tooru could do nothing to erase that grief, but he would do his best to help make it a bit easier to bear.

Then, slowly, Keiji pushed him down on the too-soft mattress of the too-big bed in the middle of his too-pompous bedroom, and he had half a mind to draw the curtains surrounding them and close them off from the rest of the world entirely, but was too mesmerised staring into those eyes, bright teal on pitch-black, to even move.

Sometimes he thanked the gods they were on the same side, because he could never even try to fight him.

“We don’t have much time, so don’t spend it looking so sad,” Keiji breathed and Tooru inhaled slowly before their lips met and time stopped.

Without his wings, it was easy to forget Keiji was not human. The only physical difference now were his eyes, and even those, aside from their colour, reminded him of human ones. But the skilled fingers undoing the buttons of his shirt, the way his body moved on top of him, the gentle forcefulness of his actions, that all spoke of something greater.

Or maybe Tooru was simply hopelessly in love.

His wings had used to be black, the same shade as his hair, and so small and soft Tooru had wondered how he could take flight with them. There seemed to be some form of magic involved, woven into the very being of the noctua, though those with the largest wings had certainly been able to fly all by themselves even without it.

As a mere human, capable of only the weakest form of magic and bound to the earth, he had always liked the thought of rising higher, until the stars were in reach and no borders mattered anymore. Keiji had called him a ridiculous dreamer, and he had answered that he would rather be ridiculous than bend to others’ ideas of impossibility.

He knew that he would never be able to soar, and neither would Keiji, not anymore.

But right now, he did not find it in himself to mind. When they were together, it felt like they were flying, and that was enough.

 

* * *

 

The words of _you need to go_ were vile, crude little bastards.

He spoke them nonetheless, hidden away in a dark corner of the courtyard where they would not be seen. Keiji gave him one last smile, one as heartbroken as Tooru felt, and one last kiss that said more than they would ever be able to speak out loud, before he pulled the dark grey hood over his head and sighed.

“As long as they don’t see my eyes, I will be fine.”

“I could try and work a spell …” Tooru started, but Keiji shook his head adamantly.

“Oh no. You won’t. Who knows what will happen? I’ll end up going blind.”

He huffed, only slightly offended but never one to miss an opportunity to exaggerate. “What are you talking about? I’m good at magic!”

He knew, though, that his own spells were weak, and something helped by an amplifier like anyone could have gone into a store for and bought would have likely had a better effect. Still, he excelled at no type in particular, but if he had to choose one thing he was best at, it was changing the look of things. If he could transform the black to white …

“I’ll be careful,” Keiji assured him. “You know me.”

He did, but even though he was certain he had nothing to worry about, he could not help the surging feeling of dread settling in his stomach. If he got caught while he was alone, he would never forgive himself. “I can accompany you to your … Carriage?”

“Carriage, yes. But do you really think the king of the land walking someone anywhere would not draw attention to us?”

“I mean … Of course it would, but …” He did not want to let him go. “If something happens …”

“Tooru.”

“I mean, say, if, and I only mean if, if someone from a hunter guild sees you … You’ll die and I can’t watch the person I love die.”

“Tooru,” Keiji repeated, now visibly annoyed, a frown painted on his face. “I won’t die. I know what I’m dealing with, and I know how to make myself as invisible as possible. I haven’t lost all my magic, either.”

“But— It makes you sick! You can’t use it!” Not since he had lost his wings. While not particularly powerful, Keiji had been a much more skilled magician than Tooru could have ever dreamed of being, a trait not uncommon among the noctua. But that had changed since then, and now it drained him and was more of a hindrance than a help. Surely he would not be able to resort to that if he was in real danger.

“Listen, I’ll have to go, and rather sooner than later.” Keiji took a step forward and gently bumped their foreheads together. “And we both know it will have to be on my own. The longer we stall, the harder it will get.”

He hated that he could not just keep him here forever, or leave on his own. The country would not govern itself, though, and Keiji’s mere presence made him a walking target, so this was the only way.

“I love you,” Tooru whispered, and with a sudden, probably ridiculous idea, he took off the necklace he was wearing – silver, the seal of the crown dangling from it, small, polished aquamarines glittering on the metal – and placed it around Keiji’s neck. The look he received was more than enough thanks anyone could have asked for, and the breathy “I love you” made it all the more bittersweet.

Then, finally, he gave him a very fake, very shaky grin. “If you happen to meet Tobio, tell him specifically no greetings from me.”

“You’re terrible. I certainly won’t.”

“Sheesh, killjoy.”

Despite his efforts to lighten the mood, though, the atmosphere remained tense, and seeing Keiji leave through the hidden pathways he had laid out as a child to meet his friends instead of study left a strange sense of nostalgia and a growing feeling of emptiness gnawing on his heart.

 

* * *

 

“Listen, is it really that hard of a concept to grasp that maybe noctua are, you know, people, and thinking like this is what led to the tragedies of the war in the first place?”

Shigeru sighed. “I know that. We all do. But the council frankly does not give a damn. So why are you asking me?”

Why _was_ he asking him? What did Tooru think the son of his usual fabric salesman could do for him? Nothing, that was what, but after facing that array of stupid old men sitting on a round table without getting anything done other than wreak havoc among even more people than last time any chance to talk about it was welcome in his book.

The boy swirled his scissors around before sitting down at his working table again and cutting the fabric for Tooru’s supposed next project, a dress for one of his friends. He did not particularly enjoy his hobby of sewing, but it was better than rotting away with nothing to distract his mind from the atrocities surrounding him every waking moment. He liked this place, at least, a small store with more clothes and fabric than air, most likely. While he did not hate the palace, the feeling of familiarity and intimacy in smaller buildings had its own calming charm. He felt safe here.

It had been two weeks since Keiji had left, and he had not heard back from him. That was not unusual, exchanging messages was nigh impossible under their circumstances, but it only helped to worsen his anxiety over it.

“I appreciate it, though,” Shigeru said and frowned at his work. “Not many of us are assholes, the ones that are just happen to be in power.”

“One would think being king would give me enough freedom to throw them all out.” But he had not even truly been crowned king yet – his sister, who had taken their parents’ place after they had died, was missing, but had yet to be declared dead, thus giving Tooru all of her work, but not all of her privileges and certainly not her title.

He missed her warm guidance and stern rule. Under her, the war might not have happened.

“You’re doing you—”

Before Shigeru could finish his sentence, the door flew open hard enough to make a cracking sound against the brick wall, and when Tooru looked up to see what in the world was happening, Hajime was frantically looking around the room until their eyes locked and told him that something was very, very wrong.

“Oikawa,” he gasped, out of breath from a distance he must have run. In any other situation, Tooru would have jokingly corrected him to use his title, but this was no laughing matter, from the looks of it. “Date has been attacked. There’s a fire, it’s spreading, they haven’t had rain in a while so the woods … Ugh, who cares, most importantly it’s probably from Shiratorizawa.”

Date.

A walled city under his rule, a day’s ride away, maybe two if you were being hindered. It was surrounded by a beautiful, seemingly endless forest that, unbeknownst to many, hid several small villages.

One of which Keiji was staying at.

He jumped up immediately and tried to remain as calm as possible when he said, “I’m getting my horse. Tell Issei and Takahiro we’re leaving right now.”

Surely, if it had been a fire, he would have had time to get away. He hoped Date was as fine as possible, but most of all he did not understand anything.

Why would Shiratorizawa attack them? Their peace treaty had seemed safe. He had done his damnedest to prevent any further actions of war, and he had done a fairly good job so far, if he did say so himself, so _why_?

“Are you sure? Shouldn’t we take a bigger squad—”

“You, me, Issei, Takahiro. That is all. We have no time to lose.”

 

* * *

 

Date was not as big as the capital Aoba, but perhaps even greater, its walls reaching up to the skies and protecting all that lived within with their enormous presence alone. They considered it their strongest of all, impregnable, even.

And Date still stood proudly as ever.

What he could gather from his first check around the city and conversations with the military officials was that hardly anybody had been hurt, there were little to no casualties, and no important buildings were destroyed as they had been able to put out the fire in the city quickly. It was certainly a relief.

The area around it, however, lay barren.

In the time it had taken them to reach the city, rain had blessed it, and the magic users, fae, and elementals of the area had done a good job in putting the fire out, but it had not undone the damage. What had once been one of the most impressive forests of the country had largely fallen apart, ashes and burnt wood lying like a carpet of destruction on the dirty ground.

It dulled Tooru’s steps as he was straying through the area, gaping in horror at what had become of the forest.

He could feel Hajime tense behind him, following him as if he knew exactly where Tooru was going. He likely did; he had never told him about his love to Keiji, but Hajime did know him, from when the noctua had still been a proud, peaceful folk living high in the crowns of the trees, or in the towers of cities just like Date, working alongside them.

When they arrived at the village, he could not help a shuddering gasp.

What was left of it was black, broken, thickly crusted with ash, and not much of it was still visible in the first place, leaving hardly anything but a big, even emptier area within the already empty woods.

But certainly, some people must have survived. Shouyou was a starchild, and a powerful one at that, their magic had to have helped them escape. There had been witches among them, too, some of which had been affine to water, some to fire, even, that had helped lessen the blow and save their lives. Yes, the forest was big, but surely they had seen the fire coming, and had been able to leave before it had destroyed their village.

Keiji had made it. Maybe he had not even been here anymore, maybe they had gone somewhere else entirely in these two weeks, maybe they had found a safer place and maybe, if not all of them were alright, at least Keiji had to be.

He stepped further into what had used to be the village, reminding himself of it every step, chanting “he’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay” under his breath like a mantra to cling to.

The charred remains of a doll on the ground made him halt, and the thought of the child this must have had belonged to made him sick. But there were no bodies, and certainly, if people had died here, there would have been bodies, which calmed him down just a bit.

“Oikawa,” Hajime said, voice laced with something like … Guilt? “Issei informed me earlier, but I didn’t know how to say it … The attack didn’t go against Date at all, at least not according to our info. They targeted the woods. Or rather …”

“This specific village,” he breathed, and Hajime stayed silent, which was answer enough. “But why?”

“I don’t know. But there was a starchild here, wasn’t there?”

“Yes. Shouyou. Hinata Shouyou. You know them.” They had been the first starchild Tooru had ever seen, and all the stories about them had not done them justice. Shouyou was normal, human, even, but would occasionally release terrifying bouts of magic, drawn directly from the stars. Something about them was otherworldly, in a different way than Keiji, as if they did not belong in this world at all.

Hajime stepped closer and Tooru did not dare look at him. “I assume they wanted to capture them then. They would survive something like this.”

Indeed, killing a starchild was a nearly impossible task, and those who sought power would not fear taking it from them by force. But how had they found out? The reason people had settled in the woods was because very few people knew these villages even existed.

“And … A noctua, as well.”

Tooru’s hands balled into fists at his sides.

“I saw him, you know. I think I was the only one who did at the ball, though. But when he left, somebody must have seen and tracked him down.”

No.

No, no, no.

 _No._ That was impossible. Keiji had said … Keiji had said he would be fine, and Tooru had no reason not to believe that. This was all a big coincidence, and it might be a shock right now, but soon, he would hear from him and everything would be okay again, as it was meant to be.

“You loved him, didn’t you?”

“I _love_ him!” he shouted back, because speaking of Keiji in past tense was not right, heck, was he declaring him dead when they had absolutely no evidence for it?

He would find him. Tooru would find him, break this whole hunt on noctua thing down while he was at it, and live happily ever after because that was how those stories ended, right?

When he turned to look around for anything, any clue, any damn _body_ , something unassuming, grey and merging with the surroundings so that it was almost invisible, caught his eye as it fluttered just a bit in the light breeze.

The fabric was familiar, the very same fabric Keiji had pulled over his head just two weeks ago. It could have been anyone’s hood, but when he took a shaking step toward it, he saw something glittering inside it.

Silver, decorated with small, polished aquamarines, a symbol he knew all too well, because he saw it every day, and the image of this very iteration of it around Keiji’s neck would never leave his mind.

He would not have left that behind.

**Author's Note:**

> I apologise to everyone, first and foremost myself, and then Aria second, and then the rest of you
> 
> I told myself I'd never resort to character death as an Angst Device(tm) but this prompt just screamed for it and now I just made myself sad dghjsgd THIS IS WHY I HATE WRITING CHARACTER DEATH IT JUST HURTS
> 
> anyway shout with me about rarepairs and maybe send me some more prompt requests (or requests in general!) on http://akaashi-tooru.tumblr.com/ ~


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